Sarah Haider writes a compelling analysis of the odd political re/alignment you see playing out today between Christians and Muslims on social issues: Similar scuffles are taking place in Canada, and around the world conservative Christians are locking arms with Muslims in their opposition to the inclusion of gender and orientation in classroom materials. Some are applauding this new brotherhood of Abraham, and hoping that this heralds a change in the winds.
The MINO problem seems to exist with every single minority group in America. You have progressive Asian activists spending all their time talking about "not your model minority" and "antiblackness in the Asian community", while never caring about working-class Asians, just spouting buzzwords to collect on their NGO sinecures. Same with Jews as well. I wrote about it here: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/double-crossed
And as for the collaboration between Christians and Muslims, it was a long time coming. If it hadn't been for 9/11, Muslims would be a solidly Republican bloc.
You see something similar within Mormonism. Progressive Mormons, at least, have more of a leg to stand on: Mormonism was founded on the idea of continuing revelation and it’s slowly shifted over time, lending some credence to the idea that it may land in tidier accordance with progressivism in the future.
But it is unambiguous in the central importance of aligning your own approach with mandates from “living prophets” and the church as a whole, and people who object to what the faith’s prophets claim while still calling themselves believers are mostly fooling themselves. The faith is very deliberately near-immune to bottom-up influence.
In a lot of ways, I find fundamentalist believers more understandable than progressive ones. I get the impulse to reconcile heritage and culture with personal morality absorbed within a broader society opposed to one’s faith, but that combination leaves people a mess of unexamined contradictions, torn between fundamentally and irrevocably incompatible ideas.
After further meditation on the topic (sign of a good Substack post right there) - one other thing that makes Islam different from Christianity as practiced in the West is that, for better or worse, every Muslim society that I am aware of continues to be very much governed by tradition and social pressure.
WIERD societies, again, for better or worse, aren't. You can do anything you want to, you can set up your own religion, you can change genders, call yourself a member of a different species, tell people that you are the new Pope, and unless there is a specific statute forbidding you to do something, you are free to do whatever you want.
Take the hijab - MINOs correctly point out that it not specifically mentioned in the Koran or Hadiths, but the folks in Pakistan could give a shit. If a girl from a proper family were to go out without a headcovering, the results would be pretty predictable, and no amount of "show me the exact Sura!" would change that. Nor would it matter what that girl thought, what "her Islam" meant or even whether she or anyone in her family believed a word of it.
Everybody in a traditional society knows what their rights and obligations are, there is no making it up as you go along, and if you do otherwise, you will be brought back to earth in no uncertain terms, and I don't even necessarily mean violence.
Jun 27, 2023·edited Jun 28, 2023Liked by Yassine Meskhout
You seem very proud of the efforts taken to ensure the literal text of the Quran doesn't change. However, this is not enough to ensure that interpretations don't change. And in fact they have.
This is why there are currently four different Sunni mainstream schools of Islamic law, that disagree with each other on various issues. For example, three of them ban all alcohol, but the Hanafi school bans only wine. Or how most Muslim scholars have found ways against the Quranic punishments for Hadd offences, basically by imposing various evidentary and other requirements that are impossible to meet in practice. http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Course_Pages/Legal_Systems_Very_Different_13/Book_Draft/Systems/Islamic_Law_Chapter.htm
The reason Islam appears so unchangeable today is due to the recent widespread influence of the literalist Salafi school of Islam, largely due to Saudi oil money financing mosques. By way of analogy, imaging a 17th century observer looking at the strictness of the New England Puritans and concluding that Christianity, or at least Puritan Christianity, was unchangeable.
The glorification of the man who wrote down what God told him to, over those who put those texts together into their final inerrant form after his death, has always represented a fundamental misunderstanding of the relative importance of authors and editors
You and Sarah are right about what the MINOs and their woke buddies will say. But who will listen? Who is actually conned? Only the wokesters themselves, and even then only the stupid ones.
To those who are fervent in their faith, there will be rewards in heaven.
To those who are inconstant and defame their faith, there will hell to pay.
There is one thing that I, a conservative Christian, admire about a faithful Muslim, and that is that he knows his Quran up, down, back, and forwards, and can find answers to any question therein.
When newsies and Marxists say, "Islam condones this or that," I always answer, "Really? If they are so supportive of this, why are they cutting off fingers, hands, and/or pushing the person off of a roof?"
It disturbs me to see churches that supposedly follow the faith allowing the evil inside the door.
More and more, I want to visit the offending place and knock the dust off of my sandals (So to speak.)
"If I had to guess at their motives, it probably has something to do with the fact that being a member of a religious minority is too valuable an emblem within the Progressive Stack of oppressed identities to give up completely."
As far as I can tell, they don't have to be the slightest bit religious to actually get the benefit. I don't think social justice progressives have the slightest bit of respect for any religion whatsoever. There are three reasons why progressives are pro-(American)Muslim:
1. They are brown.
2. They are immigrants.
3. Conservative white people fear/mistrust them, and progressives are dedicated to uplifting everybody conservatives whites don't like.
None of those reasons have anything to do with the religious beliefs of Muslims. Jews are also a favorite protected class of socjus progs and most American Jews are incredibly secular.
So all you have to say is that you identify as somebody of Muslim heritage and you get the Oppression Olympics points no matter what you believe.
As a gay Catholic my guiding star on theology tends to be this (supposed) quote from Galileo: "I am not inclined to believe that a God which endowed us with strength, reason and intellect is inclined for us to forgo their use"
The MINO problem seems to exist with every single minority group in America. You have progressive Asian activists spending all their time talking about "not your model minority" and "antiblackness in the Asian community", while never caring about working-class Asians, just spouting buzzwords to collect on their NGO sinecures. Same with Jews as well. I wrote about it here: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/double-crossed
And as for the collaboration between Christians and Muslims, it was a long time coming. If it hadn't been for 9/11, Muslims would be a solidly Republican bloc.
You see something similar within Mormonism. Progressive Mormons, at least, have more of a leg to stand on: Mormonism was founded on the idea of continuing revelation and it’s slowly shifted over time, lending some credence to the idea that it may land in tidier accordance with progressivism in the future.
But it is unambiguous in the central importance of aligning your own approach with mandates from “living prophets” and the church as a whole, and people who object to what the faith’s prophets claim while still calling themselves believers are mostly fooling themselves. The faith is very deliberately near-immune to bottom-up influence.
In a lot of ways, I find fundamentalist believers more understandable than progressive ones. I get the impulse to reconcile heritage and culture with personal morality absorbed within a broader society opposed to one’s faith, but that combination leaves people a mess of unexamined contradictions, torn between fundamentally and irrevocably incompatible ideas.
It occurs to me that an autist/Islam overlap might come in the fact that they both appreciate consistency.
After further meditation on the topic (sign of a good Substack post right there) - one other thing that makes Islam different from Christianity as practiced in the West is that, for better or worse, every Muslim society that I am aware of continues to be very much governed by tradition and social pressure.
WIERD societies, again, for better or worse, aren't. You can do anything you want to, you can set up your own religion, you can change genders, call yourself a member of a different species, tell people that you are the new Pope, and unless there is a specific statute forbidding you to do something, you are free to do whatever you want.
Take the hijab - MINOs correctly point out that it not specifically mentioned in the Koran or Hadiths, but the folks in Pakistan could give a shit. If a girl from a proper family were to go out without a headcovering, the results would be pretty predictable, and no amount of "show me the exact Sura!" would change that. Nor would it matter what that girl thought, what "her Islam" meant or even whether she or anyone in her family believed a word of it.
Everybody in a traditional society knows what their rights and obligations are, there is no making it up as you go along, and if you do otherwise, you will be brought back to earth in no uncertain terms, and I don't even necessarily mean violence.
You seem very proud of the efforts taken to ensure the literal text of the Quran doesn't change. However, this is not enough to ensure that interpretations don't change. And in fact they have.
This is why there are currently four different Sunni mainstream schools of Islamic law, that disagree with each other on various issues. For example, three of them ban all alcohol, but the Hanafi school bans only wine. Or how most Muslim scholars have found ways against the Quranic punishments for Hadd offences, basically by imposing various evidentary and other requirements that are impossible to meet in practice. http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Course_Pages/Legal_Systems_Very_Different_13/Book_Draft/Systems/Islamic_Law_Chapter.htm
The reason Islam appears so unchangeable today is due to the recent widespread influence of the literalist Salafi school of Islam, largely due to Saudi oil money financing mosques. By way of analogy, imaging a 17th century observer looking at the strictness of the New England Puritans and concluding that Christianity, or at least Puritan Christianity, was unchangeable.
Excellent!
The glorification of the man who wrote down what God told him to, over those who put those texts together into their final inerrant form after his death, has always represented a fundamental misunderstanding of the relative importance of authors and editors
I'm gonna repeat my tweet.
You and Sarah are right about what the MINOs and their woke buddies will say. But who will listen? Who is actually conned? Only the wokesters themselves, and even then only the stupid ones.
To those who are fervent in their faith, there will be rewards in heaven.
To those who are inconstant and defame their faith, there will hell to pay.
There is one thing that I, a conservative Christian, admire about a faithful Muslim, and that is that he knows his Quran up, down, back, and forwards, and can find answers to any question therein.
When newsies and Marxists say, "Islam condones this or that," I always answer, "Really? If they are so supportive of this, why are they cutting off fingers, hands, and/or pushing the person off of a roof?"
It disturbs me to see churches that supposedly follow the faith allowing the evil inside the door.
More and more, I want to visit the offending place and knock the dust off of my sandals (So to speak.)
"If I had to guess at their motives, it probably has something to do with the fact that being a member of a religious minority is too valuable an emblem within the Progressive Stack of oppressed identities to give up completely."
As far as I can tell, they don't have to be the slightest bit religious to actually get the benefit. I don't think social justice progressives have the slightest bit of respect for any religion whatsoever. There are three reasons why progressives are pro-(American)Muslim:
1. They are brown.
2. They are immigrants.
3. Conservative white people fear/mistrust them, and progressives are dedicated to uplifting everybody conservatives whites don't like.
None of those reasons have anything to do with the religious beliefs of Muslims. Jews are also a favorite protected class of socjus progs and most American Jews are incredibly secular.
So all you have to say is that you identify as somebody of Muslim heritage and you get the Oppression Olympics points no matter what you believe.
As a gay Catholic my guiding star on theology tends to be this (supposed) quote from Galileo: "I am not inclined to believe that a God which endowed us with strength, reason and intellect is inclined for us to forgo their use"
“Amendments” are Unnecessary when Allah Most High’s Speech itself is the primary source of Law. Simple and Straightforward.